"I don't think you would like to hear, my dear." His tone was quite normal, but there was a strange note of insistence in it. "It's shop, and will bore you dreadfully." He still stood by the door waiting for her to pass through. After a moment's hesitation she went, and Hugh closed the door after her. What suggested the analogy to my mind I cannot say, but the way in which he performed the simple act of closing the door seemed to be the opening rite of some ceremony. Thus could I picture a morphomaniac shutting himself in from prying gaze, before abandoning himself to his vice; the drunkard, at last alone, returning gloatingly to his bottle. Perhaps my perceptions were quickened, but it seemed to me that Hugh came back to me as if I were his colleague in some guilty secret--as if his wife were alien to his thoughts, and now that she was gone, we could talk.... His first words proved I was right. "Now we can talk, Ginger," he remarked. "These women don't understand." He pushed the port towards me. "Understand what?" I was watching him closely. "Life, my boy, _the_ life. The life of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Gad! it was a great day that, Ginger." His eyes were fixed on me, and for the first time I noticed the red in them, and a peculiar twitch in the lids. "Did you find the Blue Bird?" I asked quietly. "Find it?" He laughed--and it was not a pleasant laugh. "I used to think it lay in books, in art, in music." Again he gave way to a fit of devilish mirth. "What damned fools we are, old man, what damned fools. But you mustn't tell her." He leaned over the table and spoke confidentially. "She'd never understand; that's why I got rid of her." He lifted his glass to the light, looking at it as a connoisseur looks at a rare vintage, while all the time a strange smile--a cruel smile--hovered round his lips. "Music--art," his voice was full of scorn. "Only we know better. Did I ever tell you about that grip I learned in Sumatra--the Death Grip?" He suddenly fired the question at me, and for a moment I did not answer. All my fears were rushing back into my mind with renewed strength; it was not so much the question as the tone--and the eyes of the speaker. "No, never." I lit a cigarette with elaborate care. "Ah! Someday I must show you. You take a man's throat in your right hand, and you put your left behind his neck--like that." His hands were curved in front of him--curved as if a man's throat was in them. "Then you press and press with the two thumbs--like that; with the right thumb on a certain muscle in the neck, and the left on an artery under the ear; and you go on pressing, until--until there's no need to press any longer. It's wonderful." I can't hope to give any idea of the dreadful gloating tone in his voice.